Date of Play : April 9th 2022
TBR Session #041
Lieutenant Commander Carl Hedley Executive Officer
Lieutenant Elli-Navine Chief Engineer
Lieutenant Alexander Artopolis Chief Medical Officer
Lieutenant Reeza Ral Chief Operations Officer
Called back to the big ol’ space hole. There’s some new ships, the USS Valentine, the USS Manticore, and the USS Arcadia which just arrived. JJVerse flotilla is still there, too, joined by the USS Odyssey. Which is basically a Galaxy class, so it’s ugly as sin, but we won’t hold that against it too much.
Valentine says hi, there’s a Vice Admiral on screen, apprently Pax’s reports have caused a certain amount of concern. Seems to be wearing a somewhat Starfleet intelligence-y uniform. She says our universe’s McDonnely (The traitor guy) is a dick, but not actually involved. Someone from our side clearly is, though, because they handed over the ship with the magic engine. But she has a Plan.
Can’t take the Potemkin because it’d stand out like a sore thumb, but apparently they’re going to install a prototype holo-cloak on the Waffles. Not a fan of the name. Like all spooks, clearly lacking in sense of humour. Anyway, it should make the Waffles look like a counterpart from the JJVerse. Only thing it can’t disguise is the guns. Apparently the wormhole drive’s range has been extended, too? So that’s good. Valiant is going to drop us off, then be really obvious to draw attention.
Ral and Elli manage to fabricate some security protocols which should match up with the dastardly crew of the evil ship, but probably best not to test them anyway. Borrow some of their equipment, too. So docking happens, and so on, and off to warp. Looks like their warp engines have more course correction, too? Makes travelling pretty bumpy though. Kinda like sailing.
Doesn’t take long to get there and drop off. Cloak appears to be working. Drift stealthily for a little while until the Valiant is out of sensor range, then time to get to work. Wormhole drive on. Gotta make 6 jumps to get there, but Ral handles the navigation just fine. Doc does a scan, detects the target. It’s a pretty small station, sorta DS9 sized, maybe a few thousand occupants. It’s got reactors big enough for a space dock, though, routeing power into comms and shields. Also plenty of guns. Weirdly, though, it all seems to be turned off. Hmmm.
Oh well, there’s a bit of a rush, so time to go. Jump in, impulse quietly towards the base. Takes a few hours. Start to detect a bunch of junk scattered about the place. Carl suspects mines. Turns out that’s not exactly accurate. It’s a boneyard! A bunch of ship corpses, carved up into lots of little pieces. Creepy. Very recent, too, less than a day ago. Looks like the station used a railgun of some kind, which is kinda neat. Looks like the ships may have belonged to proper universe weaponry, too. Could be a problem.
Still, there’s a job to do. Onwards! Through the debris. Surprisingly, no bodies in here. No organic matter of any kind. Maybe collected for some reason? Anyway, debris makes it pretty easy to approach stealthily. Best way to get on undetected seems to be to take a quick jaunt through space, so suit up, everyone! Should be easy enough to line up and enter through a maintenance hatch.
Basin goes first, taking a line with him. Lands pretty gracefully, 10/10, perfect score and so on. Line gets attached magnetically, and everyone else gets across easily enough. Elli unlocks the hatch. Looks like the inner door has been breached, but the interior is in vacuum anyway, so who cares. Inwards! Looks like the inner door was melted by someone trying to get in. No lifesigns, but they can hide them anyway. So stealthy tube time!
Turns out to be pretty easy. Only problem is the exit we want to use has air behind it. Not too hard to seal some hatches behind, though, so we shouldn’t vent too much atmosphere. Just enough to fill a small bit of the tube.
Other side is dark, which is probably good on balance. It’s got a pretty big computer core inside it, too, quite a few decks tall. Gonna be a little tricky to bring it back. Could just power up the computer core, but if they’ve done anything sneaky we wouldn’t be able to find out. Better to power up as much of the grid as possible, despite the risk. Everything boots up a bit, emergency lighting on, computer screens turn up with a big ol’ list of damage reports. Elli gets to work looking for intel while Carl and Basin get ready to repel anyone who might happen to show up, potentially.
The core is pretty messed up, but Elli is Elli. Unfortunately, a bunch of data appears to be missing. Some of the mission objective is there, but the missing stuff might be more of it and it’s pretty much impossible to tell. Carl does have a look through the internal cameras, though. Nothing inside the core room, but he sees someone leaving with the cores through the corridors around. Seems to be a Human, high ranking SFI, carrying the internal security footage core. Then, shortly after, the station goes to red alert.
Basin gets the cores out with the tractor beam claw thing that’s there for the purpose, grabs all the ones we want, and a bunch that were unplugged but not removed. Just a quick sabotage check for the unplugged cores, which seem to have access logs, sensor logs, stuff like that, but several are pretty interesting. Very encrypted, which probably means very valuable. Enticing.
Since they took the schematics of the station, too, Carl has Ral take a fine detail hull map of the station, in case there was anything they were trying to hide. The thing’s pretty heavily armoured, which would’ve messed with transporters. Also got hull polarisation, too, for extra protection. Most of the interior is fancy space magic, too, so it can be radically reconfigured pretty much on a whim. Also, the communications array uses wormholes.
That seems to be job done, though, so time for sabotage. With a full scan of the station and no defences, it’s easy enough to hit torpedo magazines with phaser fire, and make the station go kaboom. Not the most spectacular explosion, but it does the job. Then, suddenly, proximity alarms! The fun never ends!